Drug Industry Vets Back Group Behind Controversial Obama Ad

A last-minute ad that attacks Barack Obama and uses images of the burning World Trade Center has grabbed media attention. The spot produced by RightChange.com, a conservative group, caught our eye because of its support from a couple of pharmaceutical movers and shakers.

RightChange had a bankroll of about $3.3 million last month, most of it from Fred Eshelman, CEO of a company called PPD, short for Pharmaceutical Product Development, according to a report in a North Carolina newspaper. The company performs research under contract to drugmakers.

Another pharmaceutical connection and another million bucks for RightChange came courtesy of Ernest Mario, who sits on PPD’s board. Mario, a Duke alum, was a big shot at drugmakers GlaxoSmithKline and later at Alza, bought by J&J in 2001. Mario is also a benefactor of higher ed, and the pharmacy school at Rutgers is named after him.

Eshelman’s name has been in the news for some other reasons. He testified this year in one of the nastier hearings on Capitol Hill. The House Commerce Committee grilled him on problems with Sanofi-Aventis’s antibiotic Ketek. PPD was the firm that oversaw Anne Kirkman-Campbell, a doctor who worked on a clinical trial of the drug and who is now serving time in Federal prison for faking data.

During the February hearing, Eshelman testified that although PPD discovered Kirkman- Campbell was faking data the company didn’t inform FDA because of confidentiality clauses in PPD’s contract with Sanofi-Aventis and a disagreement between the them about whether the problems constituted fraud.

The Ketek case is being highlighted by Democrats and some Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), as an important example of problems within the FDA and corporate efforts to suppress negative information about prescription drugs.

Fred Eshelman is an individual. When he donated to UNC with his own $$, the name for the school was not changed to "PhRMA"... it was named for Fred.

So, conspiracy theorists who believe this is big Pharma being "nasty, dirty, violent, criminal, immoral" -- how do you reconcile this?

Incidentally -- big pharma does not make one RED CENT unless you ("Primary Care Physician") write a script. I take it there is some benefit to your patients from the medications you prescribe?

3:25 pm November 4, 2008

there is a distinction wrote :

This add was produced by a group supported by two people, from their private funds, who happen to work in the Pharma industry. The industry itself had nothing to do with the ads. These two crackpots could just as easily been connected to any other industry. However, since pharma is the media whipping-boy of the moment, feel free to get in any cheap shots you like.

10:51 pm November 3, 2008

Primary Care Physician wrote :

Dear John, the point of the article is that big Pharma is going to fight nasty and dirty and violently and criminally and immorally to stop any changes in the health care/insurance system that takes even 1 cent away from them. Big Pharma says "American patients can go to hell before we'll give up one red cent of our profits"